Madrid, 11 September 2023 (ESA)

The activity carried out with aeromodels begins to be fully subject to compliance with the European Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/947, applicable since 31 December 2020, provided that such flights do not take place inside buildings or fully enclosed spaces. As of 31 August 2023, the EX UAS 22001 exemption has ceased to apply, which established a moratorium on the practice of modelling according to national regulations. Therefore, aeromodellers will have to adjust their activity to European regulations.

With this, any aeromodeller who decides to carry out this activity must register as an operator of UAS before AESA, provided that he intends to perform flights with aeromodels that meet the requirements described here. We remember that the minimum age to register as a UAS operator is 16 years.

To be able to enjoy activities with aeromodels in Spain, different options are proposed depending on the operation you want to perform. The novelty, in which the AESA UAS team has been working in collaboration with the main stakeholders, is in the definition of geographical areas exempted from some open category requirements under certain conditions for those fields of aeromodeling published in the AIP.

To carry out this activity, as long as the aeromodeller is registered as a UAS operator, the following cases may be given:

1. Open category flights, meeting the particular requirements of subcategory A3 (EU Regulation 2019/947).
    
2. Flights in particular geographical areas. Geographical areas of UAS have been defined to carry out aeromodeling activities in subcategory A3, with exemption from compliance with minimum age requirements and training of remote pilots in the aeromodelling fields published in the AIP, provided that certain requirements are met.
    
3. Authorisation issued by the competent authority. If the operation does not fall within the open category, nor has any geographical area been established, it will be necessary to issue an operational authorisation issued by EASA at the request of a club or aeromodelling association.

If you need more information about the European regulatory framework for the practice of aeromodelling, you can consult the following presentation, as well as the aeromodeling section of the AESA website.